“Is Miss Grison staying here then?” asked Alan, wondering if it would be worth while to look her up.
“At Mrs. Millington’s, the dressmaker, my dear. She and Louisa were close friends twenty years and more ago.”
“That was when Grison was secretary to Mr. Sorley.”
“Yes,” chimed in the vicar. “But who told you about that, my boy?”
“Miss Grison spoke about it at the inquest and also to Dick and Inspector Moon, father. Then I met Mr. Sorley on my way here and he told me that he had employed the man, but had to get rid of him for drink, and——”
“I don’t think that is true,” interrupted Mrs. Fuller with some indignation in her usually gentle voice. “Poor Baldwin—we called him so when he was a young man—did not drink to excess, although he certainly took more than was good for him at times.”
“Then why was he discharged?”
“I cannot say, Alan, nor can anyone else. Louisa knows, but she would never tell me. But Mr. Sorley was much to blame in throwing Baldwin on the world without a character, since he was too weak to stand by himself. Louisa did what she could, but he fell from bad to worse until—alas! alas! Tell me, Alan, has anything been discovered as to who killed him?”
“Not yet, mother. You have read the papers.”
“Oh yes. Louisa sent all the reports down to your father and to me, knowing that we took a deep interest in Baldwin. Don’t you remember him, Alan? You were a little boy of six or seven then.”